Com. v. Riley

• Decision Date: 04 January 1912
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. RILEY.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

210 Mass. 387

97 N.E. 367

COMMONWEALTH v. RILEY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

January 4, 1912

Jan. 4 1912.

COUNSEL

J. T Kenney, Dist. Atty., and F. B. Fox, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.

A. J. Jennings, J. M. Morton, Jr., and I. Brayton, for defendant.

OPINION

RUGG C.J.

This is a complaint against the defendant as superintendent of the Davol Mills for employing a woman contrary to the provisions of St. 1909, c. 514, § 48. This section limits the time during which minors under the age of 18 years and women may be employed in labor in manufacturing and mechanical establishments, to 56 hours in each week, and to 10 hours in each day, 'unless a different apportionment of the hours of labor is made for the sole purpose of making a shorter day's work for one day of the week,' except that where employment is by seasons the hours of labor in each week may exceed 56, but not 58, if the total number of hours of such employment in any year shall not exceed an average of 56 hours in each week for the whole year, excluding Sundays and holidays. St. 1911, c. 484, by which the basis of the labor for each week has been reduced from 56 to 54 hours, was not in force at the time of the offense here complained of.

I. The constitutionality of a statute restricting the hours of employment of women and children in a single manufacturing service was upheld in 1876 by this court. Com. v. Hamilton Woolen Co., 120 Mass. 383. See, also, Opinion of Justices, 163 Mass. 589, at page 594, 40 N.E. 713, 28 L. R. A. 344. There can be no doubt as to the constitutionality of such a statute in its application to minors, who are not sui juris, and are in some respects wards of the state. See Berdos v. Tremont & Suffolk Mills, 209 Mass. 489, 95 N.E. 876. But the subject latterly has been debated rather widely, so far as applicable to adult women. There appears, however, to be no ground to doubt the soundness of our somewhat early decision, and we adhere to it, both on reason and on the doctrine of stare decisis. Recently such statutes have been held to be valid under the federal Constitution and generally in other jurisdictions. Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551, affirming State v. Muller, 48 Or. 252, 85 P. 855, 120 Am. St. Rep. 805; Wenham v. State, 65 Neb. 394, 91 N.W. 421, 58 L. R. A. 825; State v. Buchanan, 29 Wash. 602, 70 P. 52, 59 L. R. A. 342, 92 Am. St. Rep. 930; Com. v. Beatty, 15 Pa. Super. Ct. 5-17; Withey v. Bloem, 163 Mich. 419, 128 N.W. 913; Ritchie v. Wayman, 244 Ill. 509, 91 N.E. 695, 27 L. R. A. (N. S.) 994; People v. Bowes-Allegretti Co., 244 Ill. 557, 91 N.E. 701. We do not regard Burcher v. People, 41 Colo. 495, 93 P. 14, 124 Am. St. Rep. 143, and in Matter of Mary Maguire, 57 Cal. 604, 40 Am. Rep. 125, which were decided according to peculiar constitutional provisions of these states, as bearing upon the question. In Ritchie v. People, 155 Ill. 98, 40 N.E. 454, 29 L. R. A. 79, 46 Am. St. Rep. 315, a statute limiting the hours of labor for women to 8 hours in each day and 48 hours in each week was held unconstitutional. On the distinction between the 8-hour and a 10-hour day, a distinction which in reason seems rather difficult to maintain, this case is not treated plainly by the court as overruled in Ritchie v. Wayman, 244 Ill. 509, 91 N.E. 695, 27 L. R. A. (N. S.) 994, where an act restricting such labor to 10 hours in each day was upheld. But, however that may be, it is certain that the difference between an act of the Legislature which permits women to labor in designated employment 56 hours in each week, and one permitting such labor for not more than 60 hours, is so small as not to require a difference in the application of constitutional principles. Whatever may be the bounds fixed by the natural and constitutional rights to freedom of all individuals, including women, to the power of the Legislature to determine maximum hours of labor for women, it is clear that the present statute does not transgress those bounds.

II. This statute plainly prohibits the employment of women longer than 56 hours in any week, or longer than 10 hours in any day, save for the purpose of securing shorter hours of labor on one day within the maximum of 56 hours per week, and for other purposes not here in issue. The complaint at bar is not framed upon that part of the statute. It is not claimed that the defendant employed any laborers for a longer period in any day or week than the law permits.

III. The crime which is charged is that first created by St. 1902, c. 435, and retained in subsequent re-enactments. It is necessary to examine with exactness precisely what is inhibited. The first part of said section 48 provides that 'no child and no woman shall be employed in laboring' in the specified occupations except as permitted. It then enacts that 'every employer shall post in a conspicuous place in every room in which such persons are employed a printed notice stating the number of hours' work required of them in each day of the week, the hours of commencing and stopping work, and the hours when the time allowed for meals begins and ends * * * [with a further provision in said chapter 514, § 67, that the meal hour shall be the same where the women and children employed number five or more, save that an exception is made in section 69 of certain employments where continuous processes are required]. The employment of such persons at any time other than is stated in said printed notice shall be deemed a violation of the provisions of this section,' with exceptions not here material.

The meaning of this language must be determined. It ought to be read in the light of the general purpose of the Legislature in enacting it. That purpose was to establish the rights of children and women, who are treated as in a certain sense dependent and under an industrial disadvantage by reason of age and sex, to regular hours of employment for limited and designated periods of time with fixed intervals for rest and refreshment, and to protect them in the enjoyment of the rights thus established, to the end that the health and endurance of the individual may be insured and the ultimate strength and virility of the race be preserved. The requirement for the posting of notices where 'such persons' are employed means wherever women and children are regularly employed for any substantial number of hours daily. It applies to every employer of 'such person.' Both phrases are wholly general and without restriction or exception. It is not fairly open to the construction that it applies only to establishments where 'such persons' are reqularly employed more than ten hours in any one day, and that it does not affect those when on no day it there employment for more than ten hours. All those, who in manufacturing and mechanical establishments employ women and children in practically permanent labor, are required to post the notices which fix definitely the hours of work. As was pointed out in Com. v. Osborn Mill, 130 Mass. 33, statutes of that character are not intended, either by letter or in spirit, to apply to any except women employed permanently, who labor for full working days, whatever the length may be. The statute does not apply to those who are hired temporarily or intermittently to perform tasks subsidiary to the main business of the factory or shop. A woman engaged for an hour or two a day sweeping the floors or washing windows, although perhaps technically in some aspects a laborer, would not come within the purview of the statute, having regard to the ends to be subserved by it and the general grounds on which its constitutionality is sustained. But the requirement of the statute is that as to those regularly employed for the full shop day there must be a posting of the notices with the definite statement of the hour of starting, the limits of time for the intermission, and the hour of closing. These hours may be fixed by agreement of parties with absolute freedom within the maximum permitted save in a particular not here material. But when once fixed they must be rigidly adhered to. Employment of women and children outside the hours thus agreed upon is prohibited, and infraction of this prohibition is punishable as a crime.

IV. This being the meaning of this section of the statute, the question is whether as thus construed is it constitutional. Arguments which would be decisive against its constitutionality if it applied to men as well as to women ( Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937; Opinion of Justices, 208 Mass. 619, 622, 94 N.E 1044) may be laid aside. It is to be noted that it applies only to 'manufacturing' and 'mechanical' establishments. These words as defined in section 17 of the same act include those places popularly known as mills and shops, where, as matter of common knowledge, continuously operating machinery and constant service by attendants throughout the whole day are not essential to economical manufacture, and where ordinarily machinery is stopped for the noon hour. The statute does not extend in that...